We quote some of M. Humbert’s remarks on Buddhism.
“Our imagination can hardly conceive,” says this traveller, “that nearly a third of the human race has no religious belief but that of Buddhism, a creed without a God, a faith of negation, an invention of despair.
“One would wish to persuade oneself that the multitudes who follow its doctrines, do not understand the faith they profess, or at least refuse to admit its natural consequences. The idolatrous practices engrafted on the book of its law seem in fact to bear witness that Buddhism has neither been able to satisfy or destroy the religious instinct innate in man, and germinating in the bosoms of all nations.
“On the other hand, it is impossible not to recognize the influence of the philosophy of final annihilation in many of the habits and customs of Japanese life. The Irowa teaches the school children that life disappears like a dream, and leaves no trace behind. A Japanese, arrived at man’s estate, sacrifices with the most disdainful indifference his own life or that of his neighbour, to appease his pride, or for some trifling cause of anger. Murders and suicides are of such every-day occurrence in Japan, that there are few families of gentle birth who do not make it a point of honour to boast at least one sword that has been dyed in blood.
“Buddhism is, however, superior in some respects to the creeds it has dethroned. It owes this relative superiority to the justice of its fundamental axiom, which is an avowal of a need for a redeeming principle, grounded on the double fact of the existence of evil in the nature of man, and of an universal state of misery and suffering in the world.
“The promises of the religion of the Kamis had all reference to this life. A strict observance of the rules of purification would preserve the faithful from the five great ills, which are the fire of heaven, sickness, poverty, exile, and early death. The aim of their religious festivals was the glorification of the heroes of the empire. But were patriotism idealized and exalted into a national creed, it would still be true that this natural feeling, so precious and so appropriate, could never suffice to satisfy the soul and answer its every craving. The human soul is more boundless than the world. It needs a belief to raise it beyond the earth. Buddhism to a certain extent met these aspirations which had been hitherto neglected. This circumstance alone will explain the success with which it is propagated, in Japan and elsewhere, by the mere force of persuasion. At all events we may well believe that it is not its abstract and philosophical form that has made it so popular, and nothing is a better proof of this than its present state.
“The bonzes Sinran, Nitziten, and twenty or thirty others, have made themselves a reputation as founders of sects, each of which is distinguished by some peculiarity worthy of rivalling the ingenious invention of Foudaïsi.
145.—A KAMIS TEMPLE, JAPAN.